Just finished another set of homemade coasters, this time as a
housewarming gift for friends of ours. The ones I made for my own home
were made from decorative papers, and one was my own drawing. This time,
I did little Chinese ink paintings to make into coasters.
After the paintings were finished, I gathered up the supplies to make the coasters. I have a box of 3.75"x3.75" white tiles left from the last set I made. I also cut up pieces of thin, sticky back cork for the bottom. I cut the cork a little smaller than the tiles so it doesn't show from the top.
After attaching the cork to the tiles, it was time to fix the drawings to the front. I brushed a nice, even coat of Mod Podge adhesive to the front of the tile, and carefully laid the drawing on top. With a large, flat paintbrush, I smoothed down the paintings from the middle outwards to set it in place, and then I put a clean sheet of paper over the top of it and used the brayer to really glue it down. After the paintings had some time to dry on the coasters, I brushed another coat of Mod Podge over the top to seal it. You have to be careful here, because some of the ink smeared. I used black Chinese ink, which was pretty waterproof. I also used Chinese watercolors for the colored parts, which was not so waterproof, and I got a little bit of smearing. I had to be extra careful not to brush over and over, and cause more damage. Once that layer had dried, I painted one more layer over the top with no fear of any more smearing. I left them to dry over night, and then sprayed them with one more layer of a clear, waterproof varnish. And voila! Nice, new coasters.
We live in a furnished apartment, and among the many things it came with, drink coasters was one of them. Ugly, boring, plastic drink coasters. Money is a little tight, not bad but going out to buy pretty new coasters when we already had some ugly useful ones wasn't a priority. BUT buying supplies to MAKE my own coasters? Well, that's a different story ;-) I had way too much fun making these and photographing different drinks on the finished products!
I bought some regular white roughly 4x4" ceramic tiles from the home improvement store in my town and some craft self-adhesive cork backing. To adhere the designs to the tile I used Mod Podge, which is a brand of craft glue I brought with me from the US. To seal it completely, I used a clear coat, waterproof spray sealer.
This tile's design is my own. I had the drawing on a piece of tracing paper that I did for another mini painting. I had painted the old sketch and outlined in black ink for fun. It was the perfect size to make the first experiment coaster.
These ones are made from a piece of decorative paper I kept from when someone gave me a bouquet of flowers. The flowers were wrapped in the paper and I always keep pretty stuff like that for projects like this. I just traced the outline of the tile around the parts I liked, cut them out and glued them down to the tile.
The sticky-backed cork was the perfect backing for these guys.
Great for holding a glass of vino...
Some water.....
Tea or coffee...
Or some nice, warm sake!
